restoring our biblical and constitutional foundations
Defenders of the U.S. ConstitutionThen and Now
On this date in 1787 the first complete draft of the proposed U.S. Constitution began to be debated. The Articles of Confederation, ratified several months before the British surrender at Yorktown in 1781, provided for a loose confederation of American states that were sovereign in most of their affairs. Congress as the central authority had the power to govern foreign affairs, conduct war, and regulate currency. In practice, however, these powers were sharply proscribed because Congress was given no authority to enforce its requests to the states for money or troops.
By 1786, it was apparent that the loose confederation would soon break up if the Articles of Confederation were not amended or replaced. Five states met in Annapolis, Maryland, to discuss the issue, and all the states were invited to send delegates to a new constitutional convention to be held in Philadelphia. On May 25, 1787, delegates from every state except Rhode Island convened at Philadelphias Pennsylvania State House (today known as Independence Hall) for the Constitutional Convention. The assembly immediately discarded the idea of amending the Articles of Confederation and set about drawing up a new scheme of government. Revolutionary War hero George Washington, a delegate from Virginia, was elected convention president.
During an intensive debate, the delegates devised a brilliant federal system characterized by an elaborate system of checks and balances. The convention was divided over the issue of state representation in Congress, as more-populated states sought proportional legislation, and smaller states wanted equal representation. The problem was resolved by the so-called Connecticut Compromise, which proposed a bicameral legislature with proportional representation in the lower house (House of Representatives) and equal representation of the states in the upper house (Senate).
At the conclusion of the convention on September 17, 1787, the Constitution of the United States of America was signed by 38 of the 41 delegates present. As dictated by Article VII, the document would not become binding until it was ratified by nine of the thirteen states. Beginning on December 7, five statesDelaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Georgia, and Connecticutratified it in quick succession. However, other states (especially Massachusetts) opposed the document because it failed to reserve undelegated powers to the states and lacked constitutional protection of basic political rights such as freedom of speech, religion, and the press.
In February 1788 a compromise was reached under which Massachusetts and other states would agree to ratify the document with the understanding that amendments would be immediately proposed. The Constitution was thus narrowly ratified in Massachusetts, followed by Maryland and South Carolina. On June 21, 1788, New Hampshire became the ninth state to ratify the document, and it was subsequently agreed that government under the U.S. Constitution would begin on March 4, 1789. In June, Virginia ratified the Constitution, followed by New York in July.
On September 25, 1789, the first Congress of the United States adopted twelve amendments to the U.S. Constitution and sent them to the states for ratification. Ten of these amendmentsthe Bill of Rightswere ratified in 1791. In November 1789, North Carolina became the twelfth state to ratify the U.S. Constitution. Rhode Island, which opposed federal control of currency and was critical of compromise on the issue of slavery, resisted ratifying the Constitution until the U.S. government threatened to sever commercial relations with the state. On May 29, 1790, Rhode Island voted by two votes to ratify the document, and the last of the original thirteen colonies joined the United States of America.
Today the U.S. Constitution is the oldest written constitution in operation in the world. It was ratified, however, only after lengthyand oftentimes heateddebate. Indeed, the War for Independence itself was a subject of much discussion and disagreement among colonists. One need only look at the Loyalists to see the extent to which the Christians among them took Romans 13 seriously: the believers duty is to be subject to the governing authorities under which he lives. In fact, some years after the war President Timothy Dwight of Yale could say that the revolution had unhinged the principles, the morality, and the religion of the country more than could have been done by a peace of forty years.
But among orthodox Christians in America support for separation from the Mother Country was at least as powerfulone need think only of Revolutionary General John Peter Muhlenberg (eldest son of the head of the Lutheran church in America), who saved the American forces from annihilation at Brandywine. Men like John Witherspoon argued that revolution was justified when a sovereign so exceeded his legitimate powers that he could be said to have abrogated his proper sovereignty. Being no longer sovereign except in name, he could be toppled from his throne without doing harm to Romans 13 and Pauls teaching about submission.
Our Christian forebears in the Revolutionary War and following thus possessed a strong belief that an oppressive use of political power gave the injured populace a right to seek redress of its grievances. It was this desire to protect the fragile flower of liberty that led our Founding Fathers to risk life and limb for freedom. Professor Charles Andrews, author of The Colonial Background of the American Revolution, has said:
The American Revolution, like nearly all revolutions in history, was an uprising not against a king and his ministers, but against a system and a state of mind . The problem was not one of mercantile subordination or of imperial authority, but concerned the very constitution of the British empire; and such constitutional concessions as would have satisfied the demands of the colonists, these British statesmen could not make, because they were barred by the mental limitations of their own time and class. Only the threatened collapse of the entire colonial system in the thirties of the next century, the rise of a group of young enthusiasts who refused to believe that matured dependencies were necessarily foreordained to revolt, and a ten years war with the stubborn bureaucracy of Downing Street finally convinced the British official mind that colonies might be entrusted with responsible self-government and still be retained as parts of the empire.
In rebelling against a system and a state of mind, our forbears chose to preserve the scriptural ideal of liberty and thus became the main torchbearers of that ideal in the world. Tragically, we have fallen away from the ideal of the founding generation, but the movement back to limited constitutional government is accelerating in many quarters of the nation and among many communities of faith. As Americans, these Christians are refusing to accept the nations slide into oblivion, and the culture wars are intensifying between them and the ruling liberal elite.
Today the danger is very real that radical liberalism will be allowed to remain triumphant for the foreseeable future, but not everyone is ready to admit that America has passed the point of no return. This nation can in 2004 elect a responsible president who will uphold constitutional principles. All over the land, coalitions of commonsense conservatives are resisting the liberal media, building alternative means of communication via the Internet, and encouraging trends toward political sanity that are already in place. They are the patriots of today, every bit as much defenders of the Constitution as were their forefathers, and they refuse to be defeated.
May their tribe increase!
August 6, 2003
David Alan Black is the editor of www.daveblackonline.com.